Monthly Archives: February 2011

We’re just back from our African travels after receiving tragic news from home that one of Peter’s nieces had been killed in a car crash. We weren’t due to return till February 22nd but were able to get a flight a couple of days ago to get to yesterday’s funeral in Matlock. It was so sad, she was under 30 years old and had three little girls. Life is strange indeed and I don’t want to go into the circumstances here but at least we made it to support the family and so Peter could be there with his close family.

Africa was just amazing as usual. Firstly we helped at the Dombondir Festival in the Casamance area of Senegal where we’re not supposed to travel due to political unrest. It always strikes me as incredibly peaceful as no-one goes there and the festival was just fantastic. I’ve put up loads of photos on Facebook here:

With only a couple of weeks to go after Dombondir we set to work on Kartong Festival. We’ve been desperately trying to get the local people to take on more of the organisation for the last couple of years and this is very hard work too! This year though there was more local participation plus we had about 12 unexpected volunteers from Brufut where they were helping with a school project. They’d come from Poland, Spain, Uk and more so that was brilliant. The festival was a great success but I didn’t really see any of it as I was behind the scenes in the festival office 99% of the time but the bit I did see looked great.

Sadly we had to return the day after the festival so I was completely exhausted and the day we got back I ate something which didn’t agree with me and spent a whole night being extremely ill so felt diabolical at the funeral. I’ve woken up this morning finally feeling a bit more like myself and am actually looking forward to breakfast to eat the first solid food in two days!